Hart: IRS and lost emails?

Hart: IRS and lost emails?

June 20th, 2014by By Ron Hart
in Opinion Columns

I can just see the members of this administration sitting around a table discussing how to handle the inquiry into the IRS targeting of its opponents. David Axelrod says, "Just how dumb do I think Americans are? I say we just tell them we lost two years' worth of emails around the time of the conservative groups targeting."

Obama was so incensed about the IRS scandal that he ordered his Benghazi investigator to look into it. Then he said, "There's not a smidgen of corruption in the IRS." Case closed.

So far, the cost of not providing pertinent emails has been $10 million, 250 IRS employees' time and, they say, 120,000 man hours. Do not kid yourself; the time spent was on covering up and circling the wagons, not complying with Congress.

This month is the anniversary of Watergate, where Nixon recorded himself with all the forethought of Donald Sterling. The IRS loses two years of damaging emails versus Watergate's 18 minutes of lost Nixon tapes. No scandal here.

For the young people out there, the early 1970s were different. We were in a costly, unwinnable and poorly thought-out war about which our government lied. There were cover-ups and selective enforcements. The administration spied on reporters and used the IRS to go after opponents.

The difference is that the media did not have Nixon's back. The IRS scandal, Benghazi, NSA spying, wiretaps, Obamacare, etc., are all stories that go away quickly. Only two major news channels covered the IRS email loss story.

Obama will continue to preen, posture, accuse, deflect and label any accusations as "racist," his go-to mode.

The manpower Obama can marshal against political opponents is astonishing. He chose the IRS to go after his opponents, deploying the coercive intimidation of 90,000 IRS workers, 4,280 investigators, 13,000 revenue agents, 1,500 attorneys and 2,600 "special agents" -- and there will be even more when Obamacare fully kicks in.

IRS employees are overwhelmingly Democrats. Republicans and we libertarians favor getting rid of the IRS and adopting a flat tax and, at least, a less complex tax code (i.e., fewer IRS employees). They gladly do the bidding of Democrats. The main O-bots are lifelong employees in management roles, like Lois Lerner.

The Obama administration knows Republicans work, make money, own businesses and file tax returns. They fear the IRS like a Democrat fears the DEA, EBT drug testing or a registered letter (which is probably a late notice on their rent-to-own, 60-inch, flat screen TV).

Lois Lerner gave up donor lists (presumably to target them) and shipped a 1.1 million-page database on 12,000 grassroots, nonprofit organizations to the FBI. All this was done illegally (including disclosure of confidential taxpayer information and donor details) before the presidential election -- why? Are nonprofits working in communities in our country a problem worthy of FBI investigation?

Lerner made a speech, took the Fifth and then refused to testify. She so relied on our Constitution that she put herself at risk of an IRS audit.

To wrap up the irony: The Tea Party folks, who say we need less government and who fear its overreach, tyranny and selective prosecution, were dismissed and derided by the media as kooks. Gosh, I wonder who has been borne out as correct? Obama could not have provided a more stark example of why a grassroots Tea Party-like movement is needed.